Image via Wikipedia Some look at acquisition as a purely dog-eat-dog zero sum game. Another perspective coming out of game theory that takes a slightly different approach than the “Always Trust” strategy is documented in a Robert Axelrod‘s “The Evolution of Cooperation” . There are games where the strategy of “Always Trust” or Don’t Play” […]
Month: May 2010
Military Acquisition: a political process?
Image via Wikipedia If acquisition is a political process (and it should be since the military is subordinate to the civilian, AND is in support of the values of the political system), then effectiveness is probably more important than efficiency. Effectiveness is may have to be defined as the “best” political compromise, ie one in […]
Managed risks?
Image via Wikipedia The risks now? Risk of being left behind if the fear was an anomaly and there is now the mother of all buying opportunities: my strategy? Continue to trade intraday with no overnight risk, at my usual levels of risk, in large cap US companies, and broad index ETFs, in either direction […]
10 sigma in the news again
Image via Wikipedia Risks are magnified after a historically volatile event like Thursday. The 11.3% intraday move was a 10 sigma event (if you treat the daily range of SPY as a normal Gaussian distribution). Per the excellent blog at http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/09/ten_sigma_numerics_and_finance.html, a 10 sigma event can be expected to occur in 1x 10^23 days or […]
complexity in the curriculum
Image via Wikipedia The college in-briefed the new Commander yesterday; From the dialogue emerged his 4 priorities: FYSA. LD&E executed its orientation briefing to LTG Caslen yesterday, and one slide briefly illustrated the following as the CG’s top four priorities: 1. Leader Development (sub-bullets below are not all-inclusive) – Develop and implement ILE 2010 – […]
Reflecting on wicked force management problems (Army)
My take on the problem with force management is that it has been treated as a complicated problem, suitable for central planning (PPBES) and not as a complex problem, rife with social & political context, in a dynamic state where the variables change parameters far faster than the planned decision cycles. Consequently, we never get […]